Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2009, Comparative Studies

The disciplinary technology of pacification works as a tool, embedded within the logistical assemblage of liberalism, which works to maintain lines of force necessary for reproducing liberalism's conditions for existence. Chapter One develops this conceptual framework, situating my approach in relation to Foucaultian scholarship on biopolitics and war. The proceeding chapters are an exploration of two different cases that demonstrate radically different contexts in which the pacification-assemblage-force assemblage is mobilized. In Chapter Two, I consider smart bombs as a disciplinary technology of pacification within the assemblage of ‘virtuous war', tracing effects of the affective force of the bombs. And Chapter Three is a criticism of the current national anti-war strategy and concludes with a brief suggestion on a new paradigm – affectivism – that recenters a politics of resistance on deploying minor knowledge to produce new potentialities. Each one of the three elements of the triad, the disciplinary technology of pacification, the form of the concrete assemblage, and schematically mapping the topography of lines of force, are crucial components to the political analytics.

Committee: Eugene W. Holland (Advisor); Philip Armstrong (Committee Member); Mathew Coleman (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Geography; Philosophy; Political Science

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2019, English/Literature

Various forms of discipline played significant roles during the Victorian era, yet, as with many aspects of Victorian society, discipline and disciplinary systems were still viewed as being separated between the public and private spheres. However, according to Michel Foucault's theories from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975) and Psychiatric Power: Lectures at the College De France, 1973-1974, discipline and disciplinary systems are not separate, but are entwined and intrinsically linked to power, particularly power over the body. Using Foucault's theories as a lens, this thesis examines the use of disciplinary systems and their effects on Victorian heroines who are non-docile bodies in three works of fiction: Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South (1854) and “The Poor Clare” (1856) and Sheridan Le Fanu's The Rose and the Key (1871). In these works, the heroines – Margaret Hale in North and South, Bridget Fitzgerald in “The Poor Clare,” and Maud Vernon in The Rose and the Key – all encounter disciplinary systems that are controlled by sovereigns and use surveillance to ensure the people in the disciplinary systems remain docile bodies. Because the heroines are non-docile bodies, they do not conform to the expectations placed upon them by society or the disciplinary system and are each punished for their transgressions. Even so, each heroine reacts differently to the disciplinary systems they find themselves in, and some heroines work to subvert those systems. Margaret Hale is punished within the disciplinary system of Milton because she puts her body and actions on display multiple times, but she manages to subvert her discipline and remain a non-docile body. In contrast, Maud Vernon's non-docile body can withstand the disciplinary system of her family's country house, Roydon, but she becomes a docile body after iv she is sent to the disciplinary system of the private asylum, Glarewoods. Finally, Bridget Fitzgerald uses her pow (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Piya Pal-Lapinski PhD (Advisor); Kimberly Coates PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: British and Irish Literature; European Studies; Gender Studies; Literature